Convicted Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht demands trial do-over

On trial's eve, prosecutors disclosed information of an "alternative perpetrator."

Ross Ulbricht, convicted last month on federal charges of running the online drug bazaar Silk Road, is seeking a new trial premised on what his lawyers contend was the government's failure to provide evidence potentially pointing to his innocence "in a timely manner."

A New York federal jury on February 4 found the 30-year-old guilty on all seven federal charges of being the mastermind behind the site where hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal goods—including drugs and hacking tools—were traded with Bitcoin before authorities shuttered the site in late 2013.

Further Reading

"Mr. Ulbricht should be granted a new trial because the government failed to provide exculpatory material and information in a timely manner, thereby denying him his Fifth Amendment right to due process and a fair trial," Joshua Dratel, the defendant's lead attorney, wrote Friday in a court filing. (PDF)

The motion, which also seeks to keep out evidence of the Silk Road servers discovered in Iceland, is not the first time Dratel has sought a new trial on behalf of his client, who was known online as Dread Pirate Roberts. During the weeks-long case, Dratel had called for a mistrial—demands that US District Judge Katherine Forrest declined.

Among other allegations, Dratel's motion says that the government, just two weeks before trial, handed over some 5,000 pages of material concerning the nature of the upcoming testimony of a Department of Homeland Security agent, who was the government's first witness. The evidence concerned, Dratel wrote in his motion, "information about an alternative perpetrator."

During the trial, Dratel suggested that the man who really controlled Silk Road wasn't his young client, but Mark Karpeles, the wealthy former owner of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange.

"You thought you had probable cause that Mark Karpeles was intimately involved, as the head of Silk Road, correct?" Dratel asked DHS agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan during his cross examination.

"By the contents of that affidavit—yes," the agent answered. In 2013, he had filled out papers asking a judge for a warrant to further investigate Karpeles, whom the authorities eventually cleared.

Further Reading

"Our position is that he set up Mr. Ulbricht," Dratel said in court January 15. Karpeles has denied the allegations repeatedly.

The 12-member jury reached its guilty verdicts on all seven counts after deliberating less than four hours. Ulbricht faces up to life in prison. Unless a new trial is granted, he is scheduled for sentencing May 15. The government has until April to respond to Dratel's latest defense efforts.

The seven charges against Ulbricht included three drug counts: distributing or aiding and abetting the distribution of narcotics, distributing narcotics or aiding and abetting distribution over the Internet, and conspiracy to violate narcotics laws. He was also convicted on a fourth count of conspiracy to run a "continuing criminal enterprise," which involves supervising at least five other people in an organization. What's more, he was convicted on conspiracy charges for computer hacking, distributing false identification, and money laundering.

David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets